"Some are even willing to commit visa fraud, lie to immigration officers and pay tens of thousands of dollars to shady middlemen -- as long as the payoff is a U.S. passport for their newborn. An underground "birth tourism" network that stretches from the U.S. to China has sprung up to cater to growing numbers of Chinese mothers who travel stateside to give birth, according to affidavits filed by federal law enforcement officers. The moms are lured by laws that grant U.S. citizenship to anyone born on American soil."
- imabonehead
from Bookmarklet

"Once moms get a U.S. passport for their kid, they essentially have a ticket out of China if they grow weary of pollution, food safety scares and political volatility. At 21, American-born children can apply to sponsor their parents for residency in the U.S."
- imabonehead

"The city's subway is the face of the Mass Transit Railway Corporation (MTR) -- a publicly traded company that pulled in $5.2 billion in revenue last year. With a $2 billion annual profit, the Hong Kong's subway is an anomaly among major rail networks. New York's subway, for example, suffers from chronic funding gaps and will spend nearly $2.5 billion in 2015 to service its debt. How does Hong Kong's train and bus network manage to clear its mind-boggling margins?"
- imabonehead
from Bookmarklet

"A research team led by great white shark expert Chris Fallows discovered that not only do seals incorporate shark meat into their diets but that scientists’ perception of the food chain in the open ocean might not be as accurate as they were originally thought. The discovery occurred in December of 2012 while the researcher was located around 20 nautical miles off the southwest shores of Cape Point, which is Cape Town’s nearest peninsula."
- imabonehead
from Bookmarklet

"Entomologists have warned that Asian and Formosan subterranean termites, two of the most destructive invasive termite species in South Florida, are cross breeding and producing super termite that is even more destructive than their parents."
- imabonehead
from Bookmarklet

"A group of researchers from the University of Florida studied Asian and Formosan subterranean termites and found that unusual weather patterns of the two species’ swarming seasons caused overlapped for the first time. They found that cross breeding is leading to the development of a new hybrid species that develops at a 200 per cent faster rate than their parent species."
- imabonehead

"The basic aversion that a mouse has for a cat, for instance, keeps the rodent out of death's jaws. But unfortunately for mice everywhere, there is a second enemy with which to contend, one that may prevent them from experiencing that fear in the first place. A unicellular organism (a protozoan), Toxoplasma gondii, can override a rodent's most basic survival instincts. The result is a rodent that does not race away from a cat but is instead strangely attracted to it."
- imabonehead
from Bookmarklet

"Toxoplasma's reach extends far beyond the world of cat and mouse. It may have a special relationship with rodent and feline hosts, but this parasite also infects the brains of billions of animals on land, at sea and in the air. Humans are no exception. Worldwide, scientists estimate that as many as three billion people may be carrying Toxoplasma. In the U.S., there is a one-in-five...
more...
- imabonehead

Finally, a scientific explanation for Jackass. Also, Nature is going to exterminate us one way or another... unless we do it ourselves. We haven't played nice for too long.
- Michael W. May